Page Two
JEWISH WESTERN BULLETIN
Friday, April 11, 1969
itor s
noteb
ool
BY HENRY LEONARD
FUTURE DICTIONARIES may include a new word, "airsassination," to describe a murderous, premeditated attack against civilian passenger aircraft by an armed band using machineguns and handgrenades. Scholars whose task it is to compile the lexicons doubtlessly will attribute the origin of the "word" to those who invented the foul practise: the Arab terrorists. If this seems a little exaggerated now, a glance at any dictionary or reference book will reveal that the Arabs invented the word "assassinate" a long time ago. It is derived from the word "hashish," the drug made from hemp which Moslem fanatics consumed before they were rfent forth by their sheikhs to commit murder against their enemies. Thus the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Vol. 1, Page 108) says the word "assassin" originates from the Arab "hashshashin," literally the *'hashish-eaters." Certain Moslem fanatics living in the time of the Cru.^aders, set out to murder (Christian leaders iti 1603. Hence Oxford
says :■ "Tlie Arab assassins
before they
attacked an enemy, would intoxicate themselves with , . . an inebriating electuary called hashish." Checking with an encyclopaedia such as Britannica, you find that assassins originated considerably earlier, at the end of the 11th century, in fact, when an "Isma'ili" sect was formed in Syria and Persia, which practised secret. "assassination" against all enemies. At the-head of the tribe, was the supreme ruler arid beneath , him were several lower strata of underlings. The fifth strata which was second lowest and did the actual killing of the sect's enemies while under the influence of the hashish drug, were the guards or assassins proper: "young men who were kept uninitiated, and I: the blindest obedience was exacted from and !;Jyielded by them." The fifth group, says r^Britannica, Vere called "the Fida'is (i.e. the devoted ones)". Accordingly, the word "Fedayu'un", so often mistranslated into English as "commando", ought to be more accurately rendered by utilizing its original Arab description, "assassin."
JI0 mSs »*• .
A LETTER published in an eastern weekly presents a Gentile's point of view on matters which Arab propagandists have been continually trying to twist: the myth that Arab terrorism is a genuine resistance movement. This has been receiving more and more credence in the Western press,
together with the Arab refugee problem and the myth that Arabs were the only refugees in the Middle East, a distortion of history that has been perpetuated by Arab spokesmen in order to win sympathy from the West. Michel Pierre D'Orleans writes: "As a principal member of the French resistance against the Nazis, I am shocked to hear the Arabs compare our movement to their terrorist acts against unarmed civilians. First, France and the rest of the European countries invaded by Nazi Germany never intended to liquidate Germany as the Arabs int€5nd to liquidate Israel. We fought like men against the German army. We never murdered children and women. We never attacked planes carrying innocent passen; gers. Theirs is not a "resistance rii6vement. It is cowardice.
"The Arabs are always complaining about the refugees. During the last 20 years, 4,500,000 European people were forced out of the Arab countries. Some 2,200,000 Italians left Libya and Egypt. And 1,700,000 French left Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Over 700,000 Jews left Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and the other Arab countries. Four and a half million people who had lived in these countries for countless genierations left everything behind. The Arabs took everything. The people left only with the clothes on their, backs. The Arabs had an opportunity to place: the 700,000 Arab refugees from Palestine in the homes of the European people who fled the Arab countries. Instead, the refugees were put in camps that have cost millions of dollars contributed the nations of the world. This was the most brutal thing the Arabs did against their own people.
"Palestine was never an Arab country. It never had an Arab government. Palestine had been occupied, since the time of Caesar, by Greeks, Romans, English and other nations. The only legal government in Palestine was the Jewish government over 2,000 years ago.
"The Western world has never understood how the Arab countries, with 85 percent of their i)eople illiterate, millions with out jobs, disease and sickness rampant, could spend billions of dollars on ammunition to liquidate a little country like Israel, instead of using the money to build schools, hospitals, homes and industry for their own people."
• nil'uaind riiOM Oft«n
•(U{}07WIU(1(( l((if OuViU
• ni7ui CMC 7l( lUlli
•NA$50W$W OT$IS mci
ilLio;rLr*i
ft
yep /and we still survived!
Dear Mr. Kaplan:
From the Hula Valley to Eilat and from the Mediterranean to the city of Gold—Israel. Everywhere I go, I keep thinking about the many peoiple^pf past jages who have walked-the same ground, gazed upon the same mountains, valleys, deserts and waters that I have looked upon in the short time I am here.
It makes me sad that I could not have been here then, to know how they thought and how they lived and how they died. There is so much history in this land that it almost flows with the atmosphere of by-gone centuries.
Thinking about this during the last hour of our flight here, I began to realize that I was not going to Israel. Rather, I was coming home after 2,000 years of aimless wandering throughout the Galut.
Israel, the land promised to the Jews — the only land where we can be Jews; the only land where we can be Jews just by living our everyday life in our everyday manner. Outside of Israel, you are a
Jew — but you are empty. For a Jew must return: to Israel to be fulfilled, else he has not accomplished his destiny in life: *'To rebuild the State of Israel asf .a home for all Je^ys to live in peace forever". /
Until this is accomplished our people will roam the earth siim-lessly and without purpose—life to be filled with hardships and suffering. ^ ^
The Spanish Inquisition, the Warsaw. Ghetto and Auschwitz, bo not forget them.
If I forget thee, Oh. Jerusalem^, . . I . 1^j
SOLOMON APFELB4pi, Kibbutz Yiron,Ksaraiiel:p^
(LUACH) Candle Lighting JEWISH CALENDAR APRIL n, 6:39 1969
Israel Independence
Day _____..... ......-Apr/i83
Shavuot ...............May 23
Tisha B'Ab ______________.JulyS34
Rosh Hashona .....:....Sept. 13
Yom Kippur__________Sept.2i8
All holidays begin the precedins
ISRAEL'S CONTINUING CRISIS
Endorsi
Tilcvah N & Batit
R R Y.inn
By BRUCE ZIEN, Chairman, United Jewish Appeal
AS IS R A E L APPROACHES
the two-year mark following her heroic victory in the Six-Day War, she still finds herself locked in combat with her Arab tormentors.
The main field of battle has supposedly shifted from the desert and rocky wastes of the Middle East to the long mahogany tables of the United Nations. But while Arab diplomats use delaying tactics, Arab terrorists press the conflict on all of Israel's borders and defense lines and occasionally in the very heart of her urban centres.
It is an insidious strategy designed to bleed the tiny nation to death. Talk, even diplomatic talk, is cheap, but the lives being destroyed or maimed — on both sides — are a terribly high price to be extracted for refusal by the Arabs to make peace.
WHILE THE TALK — and the shooting — goes on, Israelis must also make awesome financial sacrifices to maintain their defenses against what some observers feel will be another inevitable Arab onslaught. Without the benefit of
BRUCE ZIEN
free arms shipments, such as Egypt and her Arab allies now receive from the. Soviet Union, almost all of the Israeli people's taxes must go into defense.
The Israelis already are the most heavily taxed people in the world, so where are they going to find the funds to meet their growing internal needs?
Immigration, the lifeblood of this nation of immigrants, is on the upswing. Where are the funds
to come from to pay for the housing, the rehabilitation and the training of the more than 30,000 Jewish refugees expected to seek a new life in Israel next year? Where are the funds to come from to pay for continuing the social programs aimed at bringing more than 300,000 illiterate, ill-trained newcomers, most of them from underdeveloped Afro-Asian lands, into the mainstream of modern, western-oriented Israeli life?
DURING THEIR CONTINUING EMERGENCY, the Israelis have no place to look but to the United Jewish Appeal for assistance in this vast humanitarian task. Most of these assistance programs were begun by the U.J.A., but as the years went on the Israelis were putting up $2 for every $1 raised abroad to support the program.
Now it is clear that the overburdened people of Israel no longer can afford to pay the lion's share. It is incumbent upon the U.J.A., which has given life-sustaining assistance to 3,000,000 Jews in its 30 years of existence and has brought almost 1,500,000
to Israel since the nation was born 20 years ago, to carry this humanitarian burden alone.
That is why we feel certain that the good people of this com-mimity, will respond with unprecedented generosity to the unprecedented needs of a brave and freedom-loving people in Israel.
at sundown.
offOfls Granted
;C.J^. Pottery
k. Sale_______Apr. 13-14
».w>i's Gate
Auction -------------------------Apr. 14
J.C.C. String Orch.
Concert.......................Apr. 20
Habonim Parents
Tea ____________________________Apr. 20
Women's U.J.A. G Day Apr. 20 Schara Tzedeck Lunch Apr. 23 Women's U.J.A. Closing
Brunch _________.____________Jlpr.24
Talmud Torah Fashions
& Tea __________________________Apr. 27
U.J.A. Men's Dinner „..Apr. 29